some of your points, I agree. and the article was unfair to compare soldiers dying and profit margins for obvious left-wing political agenda.

however, you are equally taking a cheap-shot by saying just because we aren't doing the dirty work, then we should have no opinion. That's undemocratic BS designed to silence opposition using guilt-trips - old tactic - doesn't work here in the northeast. Look at the signatures on the constitution sometime....not all had battlefeild experience, yet I'd say they had a pretty LARGE say in things, wouldn't you agree? by your own definition of who has the right to have say in things, then Bush is just as much an armchair quarterback as anyone on this thread...except, I actually was present for all of my 4 years of military service. Ben Franklin should have shut his trap and stuck to flying kites...right?

I love the rationales that come out after the fact on Iraq....so is it your opinion that we did the right thing by not pursuing the terrorists, doing an about face and attacking a sovergn nation that had NOTHING to do with 9-11? and as time goes on, yet more and changing justifications for staying there is in order? I realize Bush isn't old enough to remember the lessons of Vietnam and it doesn't help that he avoids reading anything other than childrens books...but you seem intelligent, whats your excuse?

you were an officer of the law, right? and everyone agreed at one point of the US being the 'worlds police'...remember that? so lets put the Iraq war in those terms. Lets say you are a cop on active duty and witness a man asaulting 'his woman', you chase the suspect down the street but you are told to break off pursuit. against your will, you comply. you've saved the day, yet you still feel the nagging sensation of that bad guy still being 'out there'. you serve your term and are forced to take early retirement against your will but comply. eight years later, you are asked back on the force with your first assignment to track down a recent murder suspect. during your assignment, you alter your orders and instead track down the guy that got away eight years ago. when asked why you did this you say you had reason to beleive HE was connected to the murder suspect....but never give those reasons. The police force trusts you and gives you a blank check to storm the guys house. no connection to the murder suspect is found, but the guy is taken in anyway for the domestic crimes he committed a decade ago. You convince the police force to write another blank check along with a squad of officers to stand guard at the house to protect the other people living there from being attacked by the murder suspect and his friends. while you are there, you insist that the inhabitants use electricity/water/gas/oil provided by the company of your choosing during the reconstruction of their infustructer that was destroyed during the storming. you call up your contract friends and tell them they 'got the open bid'. (progress always seems slow, no reports or bills are produced of its progress - there is always 'much to do'.)

{ Taking back France and invading Germany only took 3 years...but this task in Iraq with modern technology somehow is much more involved and 100 times more expensive. }

meanwhile, the murder suspect and friends are organizing against a common enemy...you. every once and a while, you get a driveby shooting from them increasing in frequency and intensity the longer you stay at the home. some of your guys die, many more civilians living in the house die.

Increased criticism from 'armchair warriors' who happen to be paying that blank check, force you to do something to make it appear as their money is not wasted. Instead of initially concentrating on resolving a murder, the tasks at hand for you now is: * having to tell your contractor friends they are out of a job. but tell them not to fear, there are 'other houses' that are in need of 'protection' in the future.* restore utilities control to the inhabitants. * train civilians into guards to protect the house. * track down the now much larger gang affiliated with the murder suspect.* accuse another house of harboring the murder suspect.* convince people on the police force and the blank check payers that the assignment is going well.

no. It really is THAT simple of whats going on. hmmm...maybe the article wan't that far off-base after all.

Quote: Well, I guess that suddenly makes all of the soldiers' death insignificant.

Of course not, and its ridiculous to think that the comparison was made in that framework… it is a matter of numbers of people dying in obviously dangerous circumstances and those dying in what we would consider normal daily activities. During WWII, America lost over 200,000 troops in one day, mostly due to a training exercise gone bad… so if you want to compare “war deaths” to “war deaths”, look at some real numbers instead of acting like 2600 is a shocking figure for a two year war.

Quote: Every death is a tragedy in itself,

The only part of that argument you got right.

Quote : So, is there freedom of speech in the U.S. or not? Cause according to you it seems one has to leave if he is expresses discontent with the government.

Absolutely, there is freedom of speech… the problem is that many of those speaking, as your slant takes it, “never quite gets around to telling the truth”. This government does a lot of things that I dislike, but I don’t have to lie about them to make them appear worse than they are… the misdirection of information by the left in this country is God-awful, and while we have freedom of speech, the part that’s missing on both extreme sides is truth…

Every conceiveable news story that has come out of Iraq and Afghanastan has been a pack of lies from the media, and you can tell it’s coordinated because they all use the same “catch phrases” to report the stories. They depict American soldiers as thugs and killers, while glamorizing terrorists and insurgents as “freedom fighters” . The story out of Haditha is a good example…

Quote: Are you for or against free trade, in the end?

Try FAIR trade… not where our goods are taxed at 1000 percent of the value of the goods coming in from another country in order to ship something there. A $10 item is taxed at 35 percent, for instance to go to XXX country, but the goods coming from that country are only taxed at 3 to 5 percent of their value to enter the U.S. Volume has something to do with it as well, so we can’t match or compete with countries where they import only 1 percent of what we import from them and multiply our taxes to ship there. If you’re looking to find where American workers are getting screwed, that’s the first snapshot…

Quote: Contradict yourself much?

No, but if you twist what I say a few more times, I’m sure you can…

Quote: Those massacres never happened did they? And neither did the human rights violations in the prisons?

Which massacres are you talking about… the one at the World Trade Center… the Embassies in Africa and Beiruit… the U.S.S. Cole… the gassing of the Curds? Let’s see… those were unprovoked attacks by Islamic Facists that killed thousands of people. Do you think you can seriously compare that with prison guards making prisoners do stupid things that got the guards put in prison? If you think so, you’re way off base...

This is a war… not an encounter group session. People die and get killed in wars. Mischaracterizing it and trying to make everything the American forces and the allies are doing look like blasphemy is where the real blasphemy is found. Like most of the reporter- journalists, you seem to support the idea that it’s okay to sensationalize the facts to make somebody look bad as long as it supports you theory, but if you find out the facts are different later, you want to print it on the back page of the classifieds.

Quote: Astronomic war spending is in no way responsible for the massive deficit. It's the foreigners' fault.

War spending is part of it… but if I remember correctly, it wasn’t America that flew airliners into the World Trade Center to get all this started. You can blame whoever you wish.

Quote: Yeah, except that you need money to start a business.

People take out loans to start businesses every day. Some start small and grow their businesses into whatever they become… others build a small businessl sell it, and take the profits to open other businesses. There’s more venture capital out there than people can spend, which is why venture capitalists are so rich…. They are looking for the “next opportunity”, and if you have a business idea, they are more than willing to fund it if it’s a sound proposition.

Quote: No U.N. resolution ever approved of the war.

All 17 of the resolutions that Saddam Hussein ignored allowed for military action to enforce them, as did the terms of surrender of the first Gulf war. If you’re going to quote history, at least be accurate.

Quote: In fact, the war is a breach of international law

Again, read the previous 17 resolutions and the terms of surrender negotiated by Gen. Schwartzkoff, and you’ll find ample information to accommodate military actions against Iraq.

Quote: By the way, I'm not anti-US, there are arguments to be made in favor of American policies, it's just that your posts were so one-sided that I had to play devil's advocate.

That’s fine… you’re entitled to be wrong… Seriously, I don't have a problem with anything except the characterizations of our involvement and the false reporting that's going on. While there's a political element to many things, politicizing the war ought to be a capital offense. Too many people that are lefty's want everyone to think America is the evil in this situation... and while imbedded reporters are there to report things as soon as they happen, it would be much better if they bothered to tell the truth.

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What man is a man that does not make the world a better place?... from "Kingdom of Heaven"

Quote: however, you are equally taking a cheap-shot by saying just because we aren't doing the dirty work, then we should have no opinion.

No, what I said is that unless you have a vested interest and effort in the outcome, you shouldn’t be criticizing the work. I don't have much truck with the actively uninvolved...

Quote: so is it your opinion that we did the right thing by not pursuing the terrorists,

Where did that come from? I thought that’s what was going on in Afghanastan and Iraq… cutting off the “head of the snake” if possible. “Pursuing the terrorists” where they are is what this is all about… but don’t worry, if things go your way, they’ll be in your neighborhood next, and you can fight them on your own turf... and believe me, they're on their way...

I don’t know where you came up with that scenario that followed, but it was not only rambling and incoherent, it didn’t make any sense in the context of what’s going on in the war on terror. We’ve actually been fighting Islamic Facists since General Pershing was in charge of the Phillipines, so trying to make it appear as something that just came up with the Bush family is ridiculous.

I certainly don’t agree with everything this administration is doing, because you can’t have security in America by sending your soldiers to foreign countries and leaving our borders unguarded and open. You also can’t have it by waiting for the United Nations to ever accomplish anything… They have become the most useless and insignificant organization in world diplomacy, and while they “talk a good fight”, they are primarily a socialist front organization that is both anti-U.S. and pro-terrorist. The only thing they do well is distribute food (if they don’t steal it first).

Quote: Taking back France and invading Germany only took 3 years...but this task in Iraq with modern technology somehow is much more involved and 100 times more expensive.

It also took 3 million soldiers with a blank check to bomb, shoot, and kill anything that moved during WWII. This modern day operation is more surgical and sophisticated, and not being fought against an army that is uniformed and easily identified.

Given the same license, our country could drop a couple of “crowd pleasers” on them and decimate their entire civilization to show them we’re serious… but as long as everyone here is whining about “civilian deaths” and how we’re treating the poor terrorists, this crap will continue. The way you win against terrorists is to kill them and kill them all….

Take a look at the video “Blackhawk Down”, where the American pilot was talking to the warlord’s chief terrorist… he makes the statement that “In Somalia, killing is negotiation…” That puts it into perspective for you, and as long as one terrorist is left alive, this problem will continue…

And just so you know, terrorism isn’t “criminal activity”… it’s terrorist activity, and if you treat a terrorist with “legal authority”, you only postpone their next attack until they get out of jail. You deal with terrorists by sending them and their associates to the graveyard. Like capital punishment, it practically stops repeat offenders.

This is a war for the survival of our way of life… and unless you want to join the Muslims and convert to making this same kind of activity your life’s ambition, you might want to be a little more supportive of what’s being done in your behalf. I guarded 21 black Muslims that had been arrested when I was a cop, and I got an “up front” look at what they believe and how they think… and if you think there will ever be a negotiated settlement to anything concerning them, you’ll just be another one of their victims. They are trying to revive a 7th century religion and make it the “new world order”, and if they are successful, there will be genocide like the world has never seen before.

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What man is a man that does not make the world a better place?... from "Kingdom of Heaven"

This is a war for the survival of our way of life… and unless you want to join the Muslims and convert to making this same kind of activity your life’s ambition, you might want to be a little more supportive of what’s being done in your behalf. I guarded 21 black Muslims that had been arrested when I was a cop, and I got an “up front” look at what they believe and how they think… and if you think there will ever be a negotiated settlement to anything concerning them, you’ll just be another one of their victims. They are trying to revive a 7th century religion and make it the “new world order”, and if they are successful, there will be genocide like the world has never seen before.

I have tons to say on the U.S./Iraq subject thing, but I won't get into it. I don't like arguing politics on this site because there's other sites I go to for that...and it already drives me nuts...

In any case...Wristtwister...please don't say "join the Muslims and convert to making this same kind of activity your life's ambition...". I wouldn't have minded "join the terrorists" because that's what they are. A terrorist may be Muslim but not all Muslims are terrorists. I should know, I'm one myself and part of a HUGE family of them and last time I checked, neither I nor anyone in my family wanted to blow up buildings or kill people who were of a different religion and way of life than ours.

Look, I know you probably didn't mean to generalize, and I know you're entitled to your opinion, which I have few problems with. But, to paraphrase you, you don't mind criticism when it's the truth. And it's the truth that not all Muslims are terrorists hell-bent on making some "new world order". I know I don't. And I know scores of people who don't. And I know there are millions of other Muslims whom I don't personally know that don't. So it's offensive when such a large group of people are generalized. That's like me categorizing Christians as hard-headed, murderous racists based on my knowledge of the KKK.

Just wanted to get that clear. Thanks...

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I always thought an Arm bar was a place thumbs went to drink wrestle and pick up cute fingers.Cord

I don't have time to read this thread closely right now...but am closing it for a cool down. If I find that it contains obvious bigotry...it will remain closed. There are other MA sites that cater to closed minds.

No more political talk please. Now, for the important stuff, I'm sick of stupid annoying freshan with underdeveloped prefrontal lobes.

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Member of DaJoGen MMA school under Dave Hagen and Team Chaos fight team under Denver Mangiyatan and Chris Toquero, ran out of Zanshin Martial Arts in Salem Oregon: http://www.zanshinarts.org/Home.aspx,